


The Effects of War

by trustingHim17



Series: Moving On [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, War, Worried Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23861815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustingHim17/pseuds/trustingHim17
Summary: Watson was discharged from the war years ago...wasn't he? Then why does he suddenly find himself in Maiwand again? discussion of PTSD.
Series: Moving On [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719565
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	The Effects of War

He found himself in the midst of battle.

Heat slapped him in the face despite the dry breeze, rising from the desert sand and making the air shimmer. A cavalry unit stampeded past him as he looked for someone to help.

There. A man was down but moving, not three feet in front of him. He started to move, reaching for the kit on his hip, when his instincts sounded.

He spun, settling into a defensive stance as he registered the Maiwand native standing behind him, Khyber knife in his hand. He grasped for a weapon of his own, only to come up empty. Where was his weapon? His searching hand felt only an empty sheath, and the enemy’s knife was descending towards him. No time to hunt for another weapon, he blocked, and the knife disappeared, probably dropping to slowly bury in the sand.

Shouting surrounded him. From the battle. From himself. War was deafening.

They grappled hand-to-hand, he without a weapon and refusing to give his enemy a chance to draw another knife. The hours of practice back at camp paid off, and his enemy disappeared, no longer a threat, but he kept a defensive stance for a moment, expecting another engagement. Nothing happened. He was ignored.

“Watson!”

Strange, he thought as he spun, looking for the source of the voice. He didn’t recall anyone here dropping his prefix before.

The battle seemed to flicker, then fade, overlaying with…was that a sitting room? He inhaled, mind registering the scent of blood combining with his fever. The melee still raged around him, but how could that be? The sickness had come later, at the field hospital after he had been evacuated to Peshawar.

“Watson, get ahold of yourself!”

The voice seemed nearly panicked, making him want to help, but who was it?

He looked around again, trying to place the bizarrely familiar voice in the midst of a strange battle where everyone ignored him.

Suddenly, the world seemed to tilt and whirl around him, and the battle disappeared, replaced with a sitting room reeking of blood and fever. Where was he? Was he dreaming? He felt awake, and he had never before been aware of dreaming as he dreamt.

Instinct sounded again, and he lurched away in time to avoid a hand grabbing for his shoulder. Not followed as he backed away, he returned his attention to his surroundings. He was facing a fireplace, a settee in front of him and two armchairs on either side of the hearth. A table with some kind of equipment sat in front of a window across the room, and the wall to his left held two doors.

Doors. Would they lead outside? Maybe to somewhere more familiar? He was hesitant to leave, however. Something told him he was safer here. But where was here?

The hand came again, slower this time and towards his arm. Non-threatening. He let it, and the gentle grip guided him around the settee and into an armchair in front of the fire.

“Watson, focus on my voice.”

The voice was tense with near panic, and something about that was wrong, so wrong. The voice never sounded that panicked. He had to make it right. It was his job to make it right. But how? Oh, by focusing on it. Of course.

“…years you’ve lived in London. You’re safe…” The voice continued, outlining a situation in short sentences, but he stopped paying attention to the words and focused instead on the timbre. The voice established a cadence in his mind, and he grabbed ahold, using that to anchor himself.

The world seemed to whirl around him again, this time settling into place after a moment with a nearly audible click, and he blinked, finding himself staring into worried, steel grey eyes.

“Watson? Are you with me?”

He groaned, putting his face in his shaking palms, some senses informing him that he was in London, while his mind jumped between London and Afghanistan. He could still smell the fever, the battle, feel the heat in the air. Needing his vision to confirm he was home, he gripped the arm of the chair instead, providing himself another anchor.

He could feel himself gasping, nearly hyperventilating, and he focused on this, knowing he needed to slow his breathing. But focusing on it only made it worse. His shaking increased, and he focused on the white-knuckle grip he had on the chair instead.

His breathing slowly stabilizing, he gradually became aware of another voice, easily recognizable now. “…It is the seventh of May, 1894. You’ve been in London for fourteen years, and we have known each other for over thirteen of those. We have solved many interesting cases together, and you have been on me to let you publish again.”

He looked around the room. Had they been alone this whole…how long had it been?

“We are alone, Watson.” Holmes read his thoughts as easily as ever.

Of course. Mrs. Hudson had gone to the market and then to a friend’s and had told them not to expect her back until after dark.

“Are you alright?”

He flinched at the question, a very real fear shooting through him. “I’m not mad,” he insisted, because Holmes was not one to ask that unless copious amounts of blood were involved.

“Of course not. I never said you were.”

He inhaled again, tightening his grip on the chair when his lungs filled with the lingering scents of fever and blood.

“What is it?” Holmes had noticed him tense.

“Blood. Fever.” He couldn’t seem to form a full sentence, and he searched frantically for something on which to focus. Five things he could see, that older veteran had said. There was the settee, Holmes’ chemistry set, the jack knife holding letters to the mantle…

He heard Holmes muttering something about scents, and a cool, moist breeze drifted into the room, replacing the odors of war with London fog.

Four things he could touch. The armchair, the rug, the small tear in the arm of his dressing gown…

The sound of Holmes’ bedroom window opening came from the other room, and the breeze strengthened. Holmes crouched in front of him a moment later.

“Better?”

He opened his mouth, intending to say, “Yes. Thank you,” when he looked at Holmes for the first time. Horror flashed through him, tearing through in an agony of guilt as his breath caught in his throat.

Holmes frowned, worry in his gaze, but Watson had focused on something else.

Holmes’ left eye was beginning to swell. It would be nearly swollen shut, not to mention black and blue, within a few hours.

His mind raced back through the memory, skipping lightly until he found what he was looking for. He had thought he was facing a Maiwand native and had fought back accordingly. Instead, he had injured Holmes.

“Watson? Stay with me, Watson!”

Any words he might have said remained stuck in his throat as he lifted a hand, reaching up to gently feel the swelling.

“I hurt you,” he finally got out around the lump of guilt and horror in his throat.

Holmes relaxed, seeing that Watson wasn’t about to slip away again, and brushed it off. “It’s my own fault. I got in the way of your right hook.”

He couldn’t seem to move his gaze from the injury he had caused, horror shooting through him before settling painfully to take up residence in his chest.

“Watson? Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. I—” Holmes paused, swallowing the words saying he was more worried about Watson before they could hit the air, asking instead, “What was that?”

Watson opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out, his thoughts still oscillating between the horror of the battle in which he had just found himself and the greater horror of having harmed his dearest friend, the friend he had only just miraculously gotten back.

Seeing the trouble his Boswell was having, Holmes slowly stood up and moved to the table, busying himself preparing a cup of still-warm tea while keeping an eye on Watson’s trembling form.

Watson remained quiet even after Holmes had placed the cup of sweetened tea in his hand, using the warmth to ground himself as he organized his thoughts between sips. His gaze remained lowered, but he was completely in the present, leaving Holmes willing to silently allow his friend to collect his thoughts.

Much had changed in the three years Holmes had been thought dead. On his return less than a month before, he had found an exhausted, grief-bowed version of his old friend, one who laughed less and whose thoughts were harder to read. The last weeks had done much to ease his friend’s grief and bring back the joy that had once been such a part of him, and slowly, that wall he had built to guard his thoughts had started dropping in his friend’s returned presence. Just a few days before, Holmes had finally gotten him to agree to sell his practice and move back in, and he was already planning to enact the subterfuge that would speed up the selling process the next day.

“Have you ever heard of or noticed the ability of scents to trigger memories?” Watson’s quiet, nearly inaudible voice broke into his musings.

“Yes?” was the reply, sounding more like a question than an answer to the affirmative.

Watson frowned in concentration, stumbling slightly over his words. “Every place…everything has its own scent, even diseases…Enteric fever patients give off a yeast-like odor. London smells of fog…and horses on a hot day. Afghanistan smelled of heat…and chalk…and blood.” He tried to look up at Holmes but flinched, looking away.

Holmes glanced automatically toward the low fire, then to his chemistry set. He had been working in the hopes of updating the Sherlock Holmes Blood Test he had come up with in ’81. The ox blood he had been using to test his procedure still sat near the cooling burner, the now-broken beaker, and a small pile of chalk, among his other testing reactants and supplies.

Watson’s quiet voice continued after a moment. “Combining your experiment with the bread Mrs. Hudson left to rise downstairs, I…I was leaving the room when your beaker broke...” He trailed off, but he had said enough. The beaker had cracked with a sound closely resembling a gunshot.

Holmes had noticed immediately that something was wrong. Normally, something breaking at his chemistry table resulted in a pawky remark or a warning against angering Mrs. Hudson, even as Watson got up to help clean up the mess. This time, Holmes had turned around from mopping up the spill to find Watson standing near the fireplace, quaking, mumbling, and completely oblivious to Holmes’ repeated questions, his unfocused gaze scanning the sitting room. Asking what was going on as he walked over, he had reached out to grab Watson’s shoulder, hoping the touch would snap him out of whatever it was, and Watson had reacted violently. Unwilling to risk hurting his friend, the scuffle had only ended when Holmes had backed out of range after his eye had come in contact with Watson’s fist.

“What can I—if it happens again, how can I bring you out of it?”

Watson flushed scarlet, still not making eye contact. “I can manage. You needn’t bother yourself with it.”

“Watson—”

“It’s been quite a while since the last one, and it’s unlikely to happen again any time soon.”

“Watson—”

“There’s no chance of my attacking you again. I’ll have my stuff out by morning.”

“Watson!” Holmes snapped. “Slow down! I just got you to move back. I’m not letting you move out now!”

“Why would you want me to stay?” Watson made eye contact and held it for the first time, and Holmes could see the roiling emotions in his friend’s gaze, guilt predominant when Watson looked again at his swelling eye, but all visible as if he had written them on his face with ink. “I _hit_ you, Holmes! I _hurt_ you, and I thought you were a soldier in a battle I fought over a decade ago! What if I had had a weapon? My revolver was ten feet away! I could have killed you!”

The words were out before he could stop them. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I died.”

“This isn’t one of your _games_ , Holmes! This is _real_. What if I had made it to my revolver? I have no idea how many people I killed in that battle. I could have killed you, and I would never have known!”

“But you didn’t. And you _wouldn't_. You intend to scare me, and I won't _let_ you. It took nearly a month for you to finally agree to move back. I refuse to let you leave over something so minor!”

“ _Minor?!_ ” Holmes had to remind himself that the anger was born of fear—fear on his account. “It wouldn't have been so _minor_ if I had found you bleeding on the floor by my hand! Through my own fault I lost you once; I can't survive that again!”

It took all of Holmes' formidable control to not flinch at the amount of unguarded anguish in that statement. He had known Watson had taken his disappearance hard—his fainting when Holmes appeared in his consulting room would have been proof enough of that even without the air of dejection, of grief, that had surrounded him—but _this_...

“What happened at the falls was _not_ your fault,” he insisted. “It was mine. We’ve been over that.”

Watson stared at him as if trying to search out the truth in the gaze nobody else could read, all the emotions changing to a fearful anger that kept him coiled tighter than a spring.

Holmes continued, unsure what Watson needed to hear but desperately trying to keep him from moving out, from leaving him. “I trust you implicitly, Watson. You will not hurt me again. You only managed it this time because I was unprepared for you to attack me, and there is less chance of you doing so a second time if I know what I'm dealing with. So, I ask you again: how can I help?”

Watson continued staring, and a tense silence filled the flat. After a long moment, he seemed to deflate, all the anger seeping out of him to leave only confusion behind. “I don't understand,” he breathed. “Why would you want to continue rooming with someone who tried to kill you? It would be better if I moved out, back to my Kensington house. You would be safer.”

_Without me nearby_ was left unvoiced, but Holmes heard it as clearly as if Watson had yelled it. Suddenly, horrible images of working his cases without Watson watching his back, of having no one to turn to when the facts weren’t lining up right to form a clear picture, of not having his biographer, his Boswell, on the other side of the fire, of _being alone,_ flashed through his active imagination.

Horrified that Watson could even _consider_ such a thing, Holmes spit out his next words without thinking. “What makes you think I could survive losing _you_?”

Some of the confusion in Watson's gaze changed to surprise, and Holmes barreled on. “Why would you think I'd _want_ you to leave? I came back for _you_ , Watson. I spent three years wandering the continent waiting until I could come back to London because I missed _you_. I've spent the last _month_ trying to convince you to sell your empty Kensington house because it's simply not _right_ being in these rooms by myself!”

Suddenly, everything he had just said hit home, and he shut his mouth with a click, the tips of his ears turning red with embarrassment. Had he really just voiced all that? The look of wonder on Watson's face said he had. He moved to sit in his armchair opposite Watson, squirming uncomfortably at the surprise still on his friend's face.

Technically, Watson _had_ just tried to kill him. Standing next to their hearth, Watson had looked at him, seen an enemy, and attacked. Holmes never wanted Watson to look at him that way again, but he simply could not imagine letting Watson leave. The mere idea filled him with such loathing, such horror, that he had blurted the first thing that had come to his mind. He never spoke without running it through the filter of the brain he was so proud of, but he had this time, and, for once, that was the best thing he could have done. For once, he had spoken with his heart instead of his head, and his heart was terrified he was about to lose his best friend again. He knew if he let Watson leave now, he might never get him back.

“You actually mean that?” Watson had phrased it as a question, but it was more of a statement, said in a nearly inaudible tone of surprise. He could easily see that the detective had meant every word, even if he was now wondering how to proceed in this 'deucedly awkward' conversation, as Watson heard him mumble, now that the emotion had burned away.

“You do,” Watson breathed, but seemed incapable of saying anything more, continuing to look at him with a surprised wonder written just as clearly on his face as the guilt had been a few minutes prior.

“You didn’t try to kill me,” Holmes insisted softly, trying to move past the awkwardness his lapse in thinking had caused. “You tried to kill your memories, and you don’t have to do that alone. You are not alone, Watson. Let me help. _Please._ ”

Watson’s expression still lingered on the surprise, and Holmes was becoming more uncomfortable by the moment. _This_ was why he hated speaking without thinking: it led to conversations he was unable to predict. He had no idea how to handle something like this, but he found, to his surprise, that he didn’t want to take the words back. He had no idea how to continue, but he couldn’t imagine letting Watson leave.

“I have never been to war, and I can only imagine what you must have seen there.” Holmes’ normal collected tone was back, sounding as if he were reciting the expected results of a reaction instead of turning Watson’s world upside down yet again. “The accounts in the almanac and news articles are bad enough. It is perfectly justified that the horrors you have seen would still affect you today. We have had cause to help each other in the past. How is this any different?”

Watson smiled—genuinely smiled—for the first time since the episode, and Holmes knew he had his answer.

“This pot of tea is still warm enough,” he said as he moved the aforementioned pot and another cup to his side table and poured himself a cup, adding too much sugar just to see Watson try to admonish him for ‘rotting his teeth,’ as he had so many times before. “Now, tell me, how can I help?”

When Mrs. Hudson opened the door several hours later, it was to find her two lodgers engrossed in conversation and completely oblivious to her presence. She quietly shut the door and went back downstairs, knowing she would be cooking for one that night. It was about time those two had talked over everything that needed discussing since that detective’s return.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is greatly appreciated on all my stories :D


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